Awful 12 month sleep regression

[TenLittlePirates]

Everything online says it’s pretty mild and should be over quickly. No way near as bad as 4 and 9 months.

This is the worst sleep we’ve had since DS was a newborn. I am on my knees. Up until 11.5 months we had a lovely routine of 2 naps with 10.5-11h sleep overnight, with 0-1 wakes. Everyone was happy.

For the last month now, DS fights naps to the point of screaming. Yesterday he had one, 1h nap all day, despite me trying car and pushchair (usually the nuclear option if he won’t fall asleep in the cot). Wakes up screaming multiple times overnight. I’ve always been responsive, he’s never been left to cry. But at one point last night I was too exhausted to get up and he cried and screamed for 45 minutes (until DH went to him). Didn’t make a blind bit of difference as DS will only settle for me currently, despite DH doing bedtime for months.

He’s incredibly grumpy at the moment, has awful separation anxiety and is desperate to walk, so I’m guessing it’s those two things combined.

Please give me some hope that this will end!! I’m struggling to get through the days at work 😕

What is happening when it's sleep time? How do you normally get him to sleep?

And what is happening in these extended times he is fighting sleep? What is baby doing, what are you doing?

He goes in the cot awake. I literally used to be able to plop him in, say goodnight and leave. He’d roll around a bit, babble then go to sleep.

At 11.5 months he suddenly wanted my hand on his chest to go to sleep, but he still slept absolutely fine. This then progressed to long spells of hand to chest and off again while he rolled around and babbled, which coincided with the start of crap naps and lots of wake ups. Then it progressed to wanting hand on and off chest and getting really upset in between if I wasn’t there quick enough. I sit just by the cot but out of sight (both directly and because it’s dark) I give up after 25 minutes if he’s not asleep and bring him out and try again in half an hour. I tried yesterday at 9:30 and 10:30 before he finally fell asleep for an hour at 11:30. Tried again at 4 aiming just for 20 mins to tide over to bedtime but not joy!

Don’t want to drip feed as I know you help loads of people here. If it matter, he wasn’t always a great sleeper- we did a kind of ‘gradual retreat’ sleep training at about 7 months. Took ages as we didn’t want lots of crying but it worked from about 8-11.5 months. DH took the lead as DS was a total booby fiend.

At least he's staying lying down at naptime. The usual reason for the issues at this age is when baby learns to pull to standing in the cot and so is getting themselves stood up all the time, meaning they cant relax to sleep.

If baby is staying lying down, it's a plus. You mention gentle sleep training previously. It's usual to have to peddle backwards on sleep training, when a trigger causes sleep to get worse. So you go back a few steps on your gradual sleep training in order to get through the tough patch, then progress again. This usually happens several times.

So I'd suggest going back to how you were helping baby settle back at 7-8 months old. If it was me, it'd be hand on chest (to both keep baby still and also provide reassurance) until asleep.

It could also be the timings and lengths of your naps that need changing. What are your nap times?